


A Tiger at its Mother's Breast

by Aris Merquoni (ArisTGD)



Category: Henry VI Part 1 - Shakespeare
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Dubious Consent, F/M, Gender Issues, Threats of Rape/Non-Con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-13
Updated: 2015-11-13
Packaged: 2018-05-01 10:34:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5202590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArisTGD/pseuds/Aris%20Merquoni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Richard Plantagenet has taken a captive on the field. Honor in war and honor about women are two different things, until they're decidedly not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Tiger at its Mother's Breast

War was not the time to think of women; Richard Plantagenet knew that to his bones. Such were things to think of off the battlefield: women and wives, sons and inheritances, crowns and kingdoms. On the field there were only allies and enemies, blood and steel. No women, there.

When he fought her, then, he fought a man; a man with golden tresses when he knocked her down, a man who stuck up her chin and spat at him with his sword at her throat.

He knew not what to do with such a thing, so he cursed her and declared her the ugliest woman he'd ever seen. She cursed him and was dragged off in chains.

He shouldn't have been surprised her curses held no power. A man's never do.

* * *

He had to remember later to order the men not to touch her. They chuckled and elbowed each other, and he realized they thought he meant to keep her to himself.

It was a notion, one he considered as his squire took his armor from him and hung it up to be cleaned. He could show this... woman, that losing at a man's game had more consequences than she thought, that she could not have possibly imagined. She had no family to ransom her, as a man would; she had no reason to believe she would be safer than any woman in an army's camp.

Which made him wonder, then, what her fate had been in Charles' company. Perhaps she had simply taken him to bed? Or perhaps the entire French army had been so charmed by her mannish pose that they hadn't thought to parcel her out.

He chuckled to himself. What a thought. Of course she'd probably paid her passage in what coin she had. And she'd expect to pay again to earn some kind of freedom here. But prisoners didn't have any currency, not those like her. And hadn't he won her, on the field?

They had found the dungeon empty, and filled it with their own prisoners; the handful of English guards saluted him as he passed, and he waved a response while caught in his own thoughts. Won her? Yes. But it was different to seek sport after the heat of battle than to force himself on a woman captured from the field. As though, of course, capturing women _on_ the field were something he did every battle.

The guard showed him to her cell with a smirk; Richard sighed to himself and supposed he did want to get another look at her, if nothing else, to see what had become of her after the fight.

She was dressed in a tunic and hose; what she had worn under her armor. He waved the guard away, endured the wink and kept the light close at hand.

"Have you come for your prize, then?" she asked in clear French, not a hint of the powdered phrases of Charles and his court.

Gently he set the lamp on the floor, squinted at her. Her skinny frame could have been a young man's, for all the care she took of her posture. "I came to ask," he said, and found sudden honesty in the question, "Why a woman went on the field for France."

She looked up at him, and her eyes were clear and gray. "Why would a man go on the field for England?"

"Honor," he replied.

"Love," she answered.

"For the dauphin?"

She smiled and shook her head. "As much love as you bear your Henry, I bear my king."

He frowned. "Love of what, woman?"

"Of France." She turned her head away, smiled. "Of France, of duty, of honor... do you not have those things?"

"A woman loves her husband," he argued, "their children. Not his land."

She pushed herself to her feet. "And what does a man love, then?"

Her proximity was challenging; her gaze sharp. "His wife," he said, standing firm. "Honor. His duty."

"Then those are my loves, for France is my wife, and my honor and my duty to God to free her."

Angrily, he grabbed her wrist, to make her wince, to see her react. "You are not a man," he hissed.

Her smile only grew. "I am Jeanne D'Arc," she said. "I am the fair maid of France, and I have bested enough English soldiers in the field to need prove nothing."

"Maid?" he choked out and pushed her backward to the wall. "Maid?"

She laughed at him as he flattened her against the wall, his fury rekindled, desperate to destroy this woman that called herself man, this man with a pointed chin and elfin eyes. "As virginal as any young soldier come home to his bride," she said, and rolled her hips against his. "Come, then, you're a loving husband; show me what duty a man does to honor his wife, their children."

He threw her to the ground. She rolled onto her back on the stone, and he knelt next to her and thrust her tunic up and aside, baring her breasts and trapping her arms awkwardly outward. He got his legs astride her and palmed her flesh roughly, kneading the globes in his hands. She squirmed and whimpered at the red marks he left in her flesh, but did not quite cry out.

"Woman," he hissed. "You should never have worn men's clothing. It doesn't fit you."

"But I can use a sword as well as you can," she said, jerking her arm down enough to paw at the fork of his legs. He cried out and drew back, to no effect; she laughed. Then with a lurch she grabbed him and threw him sideways; caught, he landed badly, the wind driven from him, and she was atop him, hands at his belt.

"Sinful wench!" he gasped.

"If I am a messenger of God," she said rhetorically, hand in the folds of his clothing and fingers wrapping around what they sought, "then what sin is it to capture an enemy?"

"This is no battlefield," he groaned, reaching down to grab her again, for what purpose he knew not. He caught her hair, tangled his fingers in it; she leaned her head into his hand and worked her fingers further around his arousal.

"No?" She leaned forward, working her wrist with short, sharp motions. "Then what victory am I claiming? What God are you seeing, if not He who has commanded me?"

"I see," he grunted, "no God here." He pulled her head down by her hair, hard, but she refused to shriek.

"Then you are truly in Hell. And it is my duty to bring you out of it."

He was in Hell, he nearly believed, and when she brought her mouth down over him and suckled, gently, he came to think he might be brought to Heaven.

She was back at her seat when he got to his feet, tidying his clothes again; her tunic was rumpled, but back in place. "What did you think to gain by that?" he said, indignant.

She smiled. "To see you defeated, of course," she said. "Duty and honor command nothing less."

He should have raised his hand against her; he should have broken her then, destroyed the power of her words and her eyes. But he turned and left instead, ignoring the guard, ignoring what the man must have thought he'd won.

* * *

It was said later of her trial that she'd pleaded, and lied; that she'd claimed noble lineage and denied her own parents, to their own faces. It was said that she claimed to be a virgin, then pregnant, then the lover of whatever powerful man she thought would see her free. Rumors flocked together and by the time they returned to England, Richard hardly knew the truth himself.

He did remember, though, that she hadn't fought like they said she had. She'd strictly answered the questions put to her, and when condemned to go into the fire had narrowed her eyes and nodded, and that was that. She hadn't begged. She hadn't pleaded. And she hadn't fought like a woman. That didn't seem to be something she could teach him.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from La Marseillaise, which is a bit anachronistic but full of some fantastically bloody imagery. "Spare those sorry victims, / Who arm against us with regret... / But not these bloodthirsty despots / These accomplices of Bouillé, / All these tigers who, mercilessly, / Rip their mother's breast!"
> 
> Given Richard's relationship with the comparison of tigers and women in later plays, it seemed apt.


End file.
